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“Clarity, not schmutz!”

This phrase is indelibly set in my memory and immediately
comes to mind whenever I play the great string sextet Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) by Arnold Schoenberg. It is
the centerpiece of Accordo's
first concert this season, and is a piece I personally have known for over
20 years and played many times since I was a student at the Curtis Institute of
Music in Philadelphia.

My regular coach for chamber music was the Austrian
violinist Felix Galimir, a four foot 10 inch dynamo, full of energy, fire, a
sharp sense of humor, a passion for teaching, and a skill for bringing
structure and audible clarity to a thorny piece of chamber music. After all, he
and his quartet (the Felix Galimir Quartet, made up of him and his three
sisters!), did work with some of the great and innovative composers of his day,
namely Ravel and the entire Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and
Anton Webern). He had a natural (i.e., not bookish or intellectual) feel and
gift to relate this somewhat perplexing, technically challenging music to 18
year old kids who didn't know the first thing about voicing, the terms
'Ausdrucksvoll' and 'Steigernd,'
or why Schoenberg wrote such an insane second violin part for that matter.

I remember listening to Transfigured
Night as a young teenager, with a recording from what I believe was the
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The conductor of my high school chamber
orchestra in Santa Monica, Heiichiro Ohyama (also Principal Violist of the LA
Phil under Giulini at the time) was on the recording. I listened to that
cassette tape over and over, fascinated by the density, beauty, complexity,
passion, and, of course, the great playing, wondering when and how I was ever
going to get to play this piece, let alone be able to.

When I got to Curtis and began having weekly coaching with
Felix on Beethoven and Bartok quartets, Schoenberg was at the top of my list to
learn. I believe it was my second year that I corralled a great group led by
the wonderful Austrian violinist Benjamin Schmid (also a fantastic jazz
violinist!) to learn this with Felix. We rehearsed and rehearsed in preparation
for our first coaching, working through every nook and cranny of the 26 minute
score, trying to best determine the correct tempos and rubati, six different
opinions constantly sounding out, struggling for sure, but basically having a
great time. I will always have a clear memory of that coaching. Galimir was
literally stomping up and down, shouting here and there, imploring-sometimes screaming
over our playing. He was all fire and brimstone, his whole body inside every
phrase of this masterpiece, obsessed almost, in some kind of a trance!

He had an immense knowledge of each little detail of the
piece, for instance, how a printed dynamic needed to let the Hauptstimme (main
theme) be subservient to the Nebenstimme (secondary theme), how each section of
the piece corresponded to a section of the ultra Romantic poem by Richard
Dehmel, and how the quality of our sound as a group should reflect these
emotions. In retrospect, that first coaching must have been unbearable for him
to hear! I will always associate this piece with Felix and with those chamber
music skills that have to do with knowing when and where to get out of the way
to let a colleague come through, or simply to be a color, or to lead with a
compelling voice. His plea to have 'clarity, not schmutz,' was his aesthetic
need to have each individual voice be heard clearly within the group, in an
intelligent but organic proportion, and always, always, with energy and passion
and the appropriate style for that composer. Seems like common sense, but
pretty hard to learn when playing the fiddle is enough of a daunting task for a
young teenager!

As
the years went on, coachings were never quite as energetic as that one as Felix
got closer to his 80's and was battered by the losses of dear friends and
colleagues like the great pianist Rudolf Serkin. But several years later I
heard him perform as an octogenarian at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont about
a year after his dear wife had died suddenly, seemingly crushing his spirit
forever. He played the first violin part of the Schoenberg with a group mostly
60 years younger, playing with all of the same energy and fire that he
displayed in that coaching so long ago.

Comments

I deeply appreciate your words about your experience with Verklärte Nacht. The music of Schönberg can, of course, be daunting upon first experience, but you lift up what is so exciting about chamber music: its approachability, the way the intimate scale lets the listener (as well as the player) enter into the musical conversation. Reading this has led me to look up the extraordinary poem upon which the piece is based )http://allpoetry.com/poem/8506953-Transfigured_Night__Verkl%C3%A4rte_Nacht_-by-Richard_Dehmel), and to look forward very much to the concert on Feb. 6th!